New frequency in an ear...

"here there be dragons"

There are a handful of studies which show possible metabolic effects from EMF exposure. There are very few done with humans, and none looking at tinnitus which have found any effect. One study on humans concluded that people who believed they are hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields, reacted to whether or not they thought they were in a field, but not whether they actually were (classic placebo effect). You have to be very careful what you read because 99.9% of what people say about EMFs online is either complete nonsense, or nonsense designed to sell products of one kind or another to clean up "electrosmog" in your home (none of these devices do anything; one burned some houses down IIRC).

For most people living in densely populated areas, you're bathing in EMF 24/7, and your personal phone / computer is such a tiny source compared to everything you're being exposed to environmentally that there's not much you can do about it even if you could prove it was having an effect on you.

Much of the more "scientific looking" information on this subject comes from the American Academy of Environmental Science -- and you should be quite dubious of them:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/environmental-medicine/

Personally I tend to think that EMFs are probably more capable of causing metabolic effects than is presently understood, but the amount of EMFs in the world has absolutely skyrocketed over the last 50 years, and stuff like cancer rates have not gone up in a way that can establish a causal relationship:

https://images.medicaldaily.com/sites/medicaldaily.com/files/styles/full_breakpoints_theme_medicaldaily_desktop_1x/public/2016/12/27/femalediagnosis.jpg

I was interested enough in this that I once went on a camping trip in one of the few places in the US guaranteed to be largely EMF free, the National Radio Free Quiet Zone -- ears still went eeeeeeEEeeeEEEEeeeE

It's also worth noting that very high frequency noise, even stuff on the edge of hearing or past what we can consciously here, is often identified as a tinnitus trigger by some people -- and many of our EMF emitting devices also make all sorts of high frequency noises.

That's not a Ted Talk linked above, it's TEDx which is very different as they will give a platform to just about anyone. The video does not impress me, it's someone who's credentials are as a civil engineer and silicon bay entrepreneur regurgitating a bunch of extreme claims about EMFs without giving proof besides handwavey statements like "most scientists now think..."

I'm more of an extremist than most people on this (no smart meter here!) but I think that guy is a crackpot.

/r/tinnitus Thread Parent